Life Through A Spyglass SS
by LittleShush
Summary: 19 year old Alex Rider ponders a half decade's worth of decisions on a lazy Sunday morning. Drabble, definite one shot. Warnings : Slight slash,      See the other Life Through A Spyglass if you don't likey


**Hi all,**

**This is utterly dedicated to Speechbubble, without her encouragement I would never had posted anything on this site, and of course the pairing. I just couldn't help myself.**

**Another tiny little drabble, this was definitely a random inspiration. And again I had to get it out of my system before I could continue with my longer stories. Anyway, it really is rather strange and not really my normal sort of style. I tend to go into the whole story a lot more but please feel free to review.**

**As a warning this one does include slight slash. But there is another under the same title which is slash safe, although I don't personally think it works as well.**

**Anyway, let me know what you think and I'll give you cyber brownies for your efforts.**

**Shush x**

**Disclaimer: Yada Yada, I own Alex Rider. Completely. Not**

Alex Rider slowly opened his eyes to see the familiar deep blue painted walls of his bedroom. Summer sunlight streamed through the window, where he had left the curtains open and he slowly rolled onto his back, wanting nothing more than to close his eyes and go back to sleep. He shifted his head to the side and looked at the digital clock on the bedside table with a slight frown. He glanced at the date and averted his eyes to stare back up at the ceiling, not quite prepared to attempt a full bodied movement just yet.

Sunday.

"Day of rest" Jack had told him years ago, one Sunday, he had been out of bed by 7am, he never believed her then, being only one of two days he got off from school. He used to be up at the crack of dawn to play football with Tom, but that was before it all changed.

15th March.

Five years, to the day, since he had started working for MI6. His eye's caught on a particularly prominent blemish in the paint on the ceiling and he stared at it for a second wondering where it had come from. The more he stared at it the more his mind wandered,

A blemish on an unending patch of white, what some would describe as his last five years, a speck waiting to be dusted away so he could carry on with what had promised once to be a well fulfilled and long lived life. He wondered to himself once again, as he had previously, what he would be doing at this precise moment if he hadn't decided all those years ago to follow this path, if he hadn't allowed his curiosity to get the better of him.

Would he be in university? Attempting to apply himself to some degree, that would drag him deeper and deeper into debts clutches like Sabina? Or would he be in a steady job? Earning a good wage and out drinking on the weekends with a large group of friends like Tom?

He didn't know. But he did know what he had seen, and done, in the time they were learning to act like the young responsible adults they had grown into. Alex smiled slightly as he thought the point of responsible was debatable and he let out a small sigh,

He often wondered what his life would have been like if he had the same decisions as them, which course to major in, which girl to try to get the attention of in the local bar, rather than which way was the best to extract the information he so desperately needed from a half deranged mad man. But in the end, the decisions were the same on all parts.

Which direction is your life going to take?

Alex knew if he had just made sure he had failed in a couple of assignments when he was younger, he probably wouldn't be where he was now, but was he really enough of a person to allow others to suffer when he thought he could do something about it, could he be the one to blame when everything went wrong?

The solid answer to that in his mind was no. It had always been the answer, and it was the reason he had currently completed 32 assignments with just one failure.

And while the going hadn't always been easy, actually, half the time it had been hell, and he had made sacrifices, he managed to persuade himself each and every time, that it was worth it.

That was until Jack died.

Alex was away and he was only 17. It was the first and last time he had allowed any link to him to be left unguarded, and while Tom may complain he looks gay, and Sabina moans she can't get a date because of the agents that followed them around, Alex wouldn't let up on the condition they were to be guarded at all times.

And if they complained directly to him, he brushed them off with hurried whispers about safety and a silent pleading in his eyes that only a select handful ever managed to understand.

But even with the precautions, the whole world appeared to change at his feet, everywhere was darker, he wasn't willing to forgive either Blunt or Jones for her life, that was so shortly stubbed out and they threw him over and over again into situations men twice as old wouldn't be able to cope with.

Yet, no matter how many times Alex had walked out of the office silently praying that this would be his last and he would be able to see Jack again, it never happened. He was never granted, as he called it then, the eternal calm he so desperately craved. He pushed both Sabina and Tom away, while they were still guarded, he refused to allow them access and it was then that Jones had called time on the whole affair.

While at the time he silently wished that meant no more assignments, it didn't. It meant he was going to get a partner to try to restrain him in what had become rather wayward tactics at success – some would even say suicidal.

Alex blinked slowly, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling as he remembered staring down the barrel of the gun, held by Hughes, the leader of the cartel the duo were sent to infiltrate, his eyes sending a desperate message to the dangerous man.

_Pull the trigger, just do it, I want out_

And it had ended up with a bullet lodged in a brain, just not his as he had wished. In fact, his captor had a dirty little smirk on his lips as the bullet ripped into his skull, and his partner ushered him along with hurried words until they were well out of reach of the souls they had managed so spectacularly to piss off.

It had been that one small drip of presence, in a long and tiring working schedule, that started a train of events Alex couldn't quite describe and it had taken a long time. His partner, the first he had officially worked with, had called it "a work in progress" right up until about a year ago, for him to get out of the slump that was the aftermath of Jack. The one and only time he hadn't quite managed to convince himself the choices he had made were worth it.

But there had been people to pick up the pieces, and in a truly ironic fashion, they were people he would never have met if it hadn't been for his cursed curiosity in the first place. The assignments kept coming, and each one he would work with his partner, rapidly coming to accept each other as equals in and outside of the work environment, and unspoken conversations constantly hung between them. And Alex slowly opened up, a small spattering of light reflecting into his dark world as he came to accept the people around him, no matter how he had set his mind against it when he had first met them.

Alex sighed heavily as he pulled himself from his thoughts and he thumped his head back onto the pillow. He smiled slightly as he felt a hand gently run over his toned stomach and an arm came to rest over his torso, ending with gentle fingers rubbing slow circles against his skin.

"Alex," a voice said sleepily and the blonde turned his head towards the voice,

"Yeah?"

"Come on, go back to sleep," Ben mumbled drowsily his head firmly against the pillows and eyes closed against the bright morning sunlight and Alex smiled slightly,

"There's a mark on the ceiling," Alex whispered in a serious tone, Ben opened one tired eye and looked at the younger through one sleep hazed eye, giving him a knowing look,Ben smiled drowsily.

"We'll paint it later." Ben replied, understanding the youngers silent musings and Alex nodded as he led his head gently on the pillow beside Ben's face, he couldn't help the smile that spread across his lips as the man grabbed a chaste kiss, a smile that remained there even after the man pulled away.

"Stop thinking Al, It's Sunday. Day of rest," Ben muttered as he turned onto his back, he gently tapped his chest and Alex led his head on the indicated spot with a lingering glance back up at the ceiling as Ben's arm wrapped around his back, finishing with a hand that came to rest against the soft skin on his hip.

Yes, the last five years hadn't been all that easy. But maybe a blemish is hidden just as easily with a tin of new paint.

Alex nestled his head gently against Ben's chest as he draped an arm over his front and leant a leg between the man's, revelling in the feeling of warmth and security.

And sometimes, maybe, just sometimes, the choices he made were worth it.

Alex slowly allowed his eyes to drift closed, happy just to revel in the light that was his current existence, rather than worry about what could-have-been's and what-will-be's that lay behind his choices.


End file.
